“Have you got a womb space for your son?”

I haven’t got a list of “questions that I thought I’d never be asked” but surely if I had, that one would have been near the top somewhere. I’ll put it in context: as I’ve said before, we’re doing two types of therapy: Developmental Dyadic Psychotherapy (DDP) and Sensory Attachment Intervention (SAI). The DDP is great. Some days Robbie is more open to talking and other days not so much, but we can see the use of it and we think we’re making good progress. The SAI has mostly involved Robbie swinging from a giant rubber tyre and all of us jumping on cushions so far. This gets recorded on video and then the SAI specialist gives us feedback on how Robbie interacts with us. Last week we had a feedback session and the therapist, given our obvious lack of understanding of what’s going on, went through the aims of the sessions one more time. Nope, still no clearer. I mean, we understand what it’s supposed to do, but we really don’t get how it’s supposed to happen by jumping on cushions and swinging. It really doesn’t help that we don’t seem to connect with the therapist either. She’s a bit earth mother-y for us. We keep thinking any time soon she’s going to give us a talking stick…

So anyhow, at this latest feedback session she said two things that first puzzled me, and then the more I think about them actually made me quite cross. The first was the question above. The answer? No, we don’t have a “womb space” for Robbie. By “womb space” she actually means a safe place that he can withdraw to when he wants, somewhere near us. The term is as inappropriate as it gets. Whoever came up with it obviously didn’t think that many adopters are infertile women who probably don’t like the idea of having to provide a “womb space” for a child that was born out of someone else. And let’s not get started on how two men might feel about the suggestion that their son needs “womb space”. Infuriating. The therapist suggested a pop-up tent in the living room would make a good womb space. We’ve looked at a couple and Robbie isn’t keen, but he quite liked a huge cushion that some friends have at home. We could buy a similar one and put in the living room. I’ll ask the therapist what she thinks…

The second thing she mentioned was our physical contact with Robbie. Robbie can be very baby-ish sometimes. He wants a lot of cuddles and kisses, sits on our laps and also climbs into our bed speaking “goo-goo ga-ga”. The therapist thinks we have to be careful that Robbie doesn’t get confused as to what appropriate contact with adults is, as that may make him more prone to sexual abuse. Like I say, I was puzzled by this at first: we’ve always been told that because of his trauma, regression was a typical stage, so we’ve gone with it. Also, after a quick survey of close friends (some of whom have children two or three years older than Robbie) I find that their kids also get into bed with them for a cuddle. The more I think about the comment from the therapist, the angrier I get about it. A small part of me also wonders if a heterosexual couple would have received the same advice…